UNIONS THAT DO not sign up to the new Haddington Road agreement will see “less favourable” conditions apply to them, said the junior Finance Minister Brian Hayes.
Speaking on Newstalk Breakfast this morning, he said the negotiations have “concluded” and they now have an agreement. The ASTI and TUI say the Haddington Road proposals aren’t sufficiently different from the Croke Park 2 agreement, with both unions rejecting it.
Minister Hayes said that he did not accept that the teachers unions had put a halt to the proposal before it had even started, saying that it was just two unions that will not be balloting members, stating that there were many other unions.
He said “less favourable conditions will apply to those unions where we do not have an agreement”, but said that the “great majority of unions are going back to their members, 16 unions in total as I understand it, where they had previously recommended a no vote”.
He said the government never said that every union would come over the line in regards to supporting this new agreement – “we never made that claim,” he said, adding that it was a matter for each union to decide whether to accept the new deal.
If they don’t, they don’t and the conditions won’t apply to them and it is fair to say that their members will lose out as a consequence.
He said under the new agreement the government is confident that the savings this year will reach €300 million and he believed that the savings for 2015 “could go well beyond the €1 billion target set by the government”.
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